Monday, October 27, 2008

Speaking of Plagues...

I came home tonight to find fire trucks and people milling around outside my apartment building. Now this isn't an uncommon experience. For some reason, we often have false alarms. The building gets evacuated, the fire trucks come, they leave after half an hour, and we go back in. But this time was different.

I notice people still in their apartments, and ask a neighbour what is going on. It turns out that there was some sort of gas in the common areas that was causing people's throats to hurt! Something like mace or pepper spray, or something worse. The poor owner of the building was running around praying it wasn't a meth lab.

Ambulances start arriving, and they segregate the people who were inside the building, and put them in a quarantined area. Then the HAZMAT teams and police show up!

The rest of the story is pretty boring, and mostly involves me standing around watching what's going on. After several hours, they let people back in. I'm still not sure what exactly happened.